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The Moon square Pluto

the Moon square Pluto, within one nativity or between two charts in synastry

What the tradition reads

Within a single chart the Moon square Pluto is read as a native who is not always open with their feelings: a strong urge to share what is innermost sits alongside a simultaneous desire to control exactly what others are allowed to know, a contradiction the tradition traces to fear rather than to simple reserve. Where the sextile or trine lets depth and confidence cooperate, the square keeps them working against each other, intensity that wants expression and a guardedness that will not quite permit it. Between two charts, this square is read through the same deep feelings every Moon-Pluto contact arouses, now turned toward power struggles and, sources say, even some psychological demons: a fear of loss can be generated that gives rise to jealousy, control or possessiveness, and the tradition's own recommendation, where the conflict will not resolve easily on its own, is to seek help managing it rather than to let the power struggle simply run its course.

The story

A square is ninety degrees, a quarter of the circle, one of the four configurations Ptolemy names; Wikipedia's own summary of the aspect calls the square a hard aspect that creates a strong and usable tension requiring adjustment or a decision, and Ptolemy calls it, together with the opposition, discordant. Persephone offers the clearest mythic bridge between these two: daughter of Demeter, she was gathering flowers when Hades burst through a cleft in the earth and carried her into the underworld with Zeus's consent; grieving, Demeter let the earth grow nothing until a bargain was struck, and because Persephone had eaten pomegranate seeds while below, she was bound to spend a third of each year, the winter months, in Pluto's realm and the rest above with her mother, the changing seasons read ever since as the visible trace of her passage. Set at this harder angle, the abduction itself is what the Moon feels: comfort and instinct pulled downward against their own will, a season imposed rather than agreed to, with the promised spring not always trusted to actually arrive on time.

Written from

Corpus key aspect:Moon:Pluto:square.